Nurse until you cry.

I popped over to Pumproom Confessions yesterday and saw a button on the sidebar that said “Breastfeeding shouldn’t be a downer.” As I am ever interested in the world of nursing, I clicked on it. It led me to a website for Dysphroic Milk Ejection Reflex. Suddenly I was reading account after account from women who experienced the same thing I do when nursing.

I love to nurse, the closeness is amazing and I am a long term advocate of it. So I found it a bit dismaying that each time I sat down to nurse my son I would suddenly be overcome with a deep wave of despair. It would punch me right in the stomach and sit there for a minute to two. I told myself it was mild post partum depression. I told myself it was a reaction to finally sitting down and not distracting myself from my grief over a departed friend. I didn’t connect it with my milk letting down. I didn’t connect it with nursing at all, even though it happened every time I sat down to do it. I just figured it was something else. I never knew it was a documented condition that afflicted other moms as well.

I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to me that I am a) not alone, b) not insane c) not imagining it. I feel so much better simply knowing that there is a physical reason for those moments of despair, and that there are people researching it to see if there is something that can be done. Clearly some wire in my brain is crossed. Evolutionarily it makes sense to have pleasurable emotions released when your milk lets down, not despairing ones.

If you are a nursing mother, and you feel inexplicably sad, anxious, angry, or depressed for short intense periods while nursing, check out the website on D-MER. Breastfeeding is challenging enough without having to battle intense and nebulous emotional demons along with it. I feel so much better simply knowing more about the problem, and I would bet you will too.

I had a friend who had this issue. I wonder if there is a deeper psychological issue involved. My friend was sexually abused as a child. There may be an underlying issue with depression or a chemical imbalance that surfaces with the let down. It totally makes since that this happens to some since most women have intense feelings of well being with nursing and for others there is the opposite effect. I hope there will be research on it since there are probably a lot of women suffering silently or feeling bad that nursing makes them feel so bad.

Slackermommy,
I would think there was something underlying with me as well. I had an idyllic childhood, so that’s not it, but I had a very good friend die unexpectedly a month before my son’s birth, so it may have had something to do with triggering the D-MER. I never had this problem with my daughter, so I would imaging something hormonal or chemical changed.
Thanks for stopping in!